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A podcast from renowned silent film accompanist/historian Ben Model covering the techniques of creating and performing live scores to silent films, as well as a discussion of the language of silent cinema. Find what goes on in the mind of a silent film accompanist before, during and after playing for a show. Learn about the aesthetics of silent filmmaking and storytelling language.

Ben Model's sites

Peter Pan on Long Island, and more...

Today's show wraps up a rather busy December; 10 shows plus some scoring for DVDs. Two rather successful school shows of The Crowd at AMMI, a vaudeville show in Manahawkin NJ, and the Silent Clowns "Buster's Stunning Stunts" shows are among the highlights.

Played for Peter Pan (1924) at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, NY (Long Island) today at noon. The show was well-attended, lots of families as well as classic film fans. I return to the CAC on Thurs Feb 22 for Keaton's Our Hospitality (1924). A nice theater, with a great cafe and really wonderful community support. It's been around for about 30 years, started by Vic Skolnick and Charlotte Sky, and still run by them and their son Dylan. Print was in 35mm from Kino; I brought a tray of silent era glass slide repro's from Silent Cinema's collection. Piano is a Kawai upright, which was in good shape. It's always nice to play an upright and not be thinking about what regulating work the action needs during the show...

Played for two shows of Thomas Ince films at MoMA yesterday (12/29) in the new Celeste Bartos Theater, in the museum's new education wing. Brought my own keyboard (Kurzweil PC2) as there is no instrument in that theater. Will be doing so for a program on Sat Jan 13 at 2pm in the series Watch This!: Films for Tweens. Worked with Liz Margulies of MoMA's Ford Family Programs on picking the films for the three tweens shows (1/13, 2/3 and 3/17). The January show will be CC's The Cure, Keaton's One Week, and Lloyd's Safety Last. The theater's really nice, intimate, sort of a smaller edition of Titus 2 (it seats about 100).

Did some recording earlier in the month for Kino. All shorts which will be extras on a DVD of baseball features coming out in 2007. Scored the shorts on both piano and Miditzer. That'll be two Kino releases with scores by me next year (the other release being a Houdini set, with my digital orchestral score for Haldane of the Secret Service).

Hopefully, 2007 will also see the release of the infamous Charley Chase set from Milestone, and a DVD from Unknown Video of a score I did on Miditzer for What Happened to Rosa with Mabel Normand. Have got a project in the hopper with Reelclassic as well.

It's been a great year -- played more shows and found more new venues than last year, plus the success of the Arbuckle retrospective at MoMA, which I co-organized. Looking forward to more fun in the world of silent film exhibition in the new year!